Health Assessment Lab (HAL)

An innovator in the basic science of patient reported outcomes

The mission of the Health Assessment Lab is to advance the state-of-the-art of tools for monitoring health care services and health outcomes from the patient/consumer point of view.

The program includes four areas of activity:

development and validation of new measures;
translation and adaptation of tools for use in international research;
technical assistance in support of patient-based tools in a variety of specific applications; and
education and training in psychometrics as applied to the health care field.

Health Assessment Lab, was founded by John E. Ware, Jr., Ph.D., principal developer of the SF-36® Health Survey and other "SF" (Short Form) surveys assessing patient reported outcomes. It is a free-standing, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) organization located west of Boston, Massachusetts. It evolved from an initial research program launched when the Health Institute of New England Medical Center was founded in 1988. The Health Assessment Lab retains ties to the Health Institute and also works closely with other academic institutions in the area.

Health Assessment Lab collaborates with a group of national and international scientists to carry out basic research in patient reported outcomes (PROs). Its corporate partner, QualityMetric Incorporated (QM), takes patient-reported outcomes measurement and research and makes the leap from the scientific community to the health care industry at large, advocating for standardized incorporation of the patient's voice into almost every facet of health care including risk screening, treatment planning and drug efficacy measurement.

One focus of both entities has been the development and use of short-form (SF) generic health surveys (such as the SF-36®, and SF-36v2™ Health Surveys and the shorter SF-12® and SF-12v2™ Health Surveys), which are among the most scientifically-validated and widely-used generic measures of health-related quality of life.

Licensing information
We remain committed to making our surveys available royalty free to individuals and organizations for unfunded scholarly research. Requests from individuals and organizations engaged in scholarly research using these tools should register [here]. Please notify us if your research is published with citation for inclusion in our Survey Library.